Location from Icewind Dale by R.A. Salvatore / Wizards of the Coast / Black Isle Studios
A colossal mountain range stretching across the width of northern Faerûn — an impassable wall of stone and ice that isolates Icewind Dale from the civilized south.
The mountains generate their own weather — storms form without warning as warm southern air collides with arctic cold, producing whiteout blizzards that can last for days. The silence between storms is absolute and oppressive, broken only by the crack of splitting rock in the cold and the distant rumble of ice shifting. The air thins rapidly at altitude, carrying a metallic taste and the faint sulfur scent of geothermal vents. Wind howls through the passes with enough force to knock a grown man off his feet. The mountains are riddled with caves and tunnels — some natural, some carved by dwarves, some bored by creatures best left undisturbed. Frost giants build crude holdfasts on the high plateaus. Orc tribes infest the lower caves in numbers that periodically swell into hordes. The passes are littered with the frozen remains of those who misjudged the weather or their own endurance.
Jagged peaks of dark granite thrust upward through permanent snowfields, their summits lost in cloud cover for much of the year. The range has no gentle foothills — it rises abruptly from the tundra floor in sheer cliff faces and knife-edge ridges. Glacial valleys cut between the peaks, choked with blue-white ice and scoured by avalanches. Passes are narrow, treacherous, and snow-choked for nine months of the year. From the tundra, the mountains appear as a solid dark wall on the southern horizon, dwarfing everything beneath them.
Also known as: The Spine, The Wall of the World, Worldspine Mountains